


Beyond All Earthly Words

by HYPERFocused



Category: Original Work, Political RPF - US 21st c.
Genre: Angst, Antisemitism, Community: fan_flashworks, Gen, Judaism, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 06:38:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9589169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HYPERFocused/pseuds/HYPERFocused
Summary: Mourning has broken





	

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: PG for Pissed, Greatly  
> Content notes: This poem's subject offends me, but the poem shouldn't offend.  
> A/N: Title from the translation of the Mourner's Kaddish  
> 

My activist lesbian novelist sister  
Posted on Facebook  
just post Election Day.

"Woke up  
with a song in my head  
and realized it's the Kaddish"

It did feel like a death.  
An assassination of our ideals  
The burial of our complacence.

Our Timelines were filled  
with vitriol and fear  
in inequal measure.

We gorged on talk  
Of tiny hands  
on huge assholes.

Variations on Orange  
bloated Twitter memes  
Filled Facebook.

Scary pumpkin head man,  
Complexion like a Cheeto.  
The marshmallow Circus peanut.

We snickered at silly food similes,  
Though nothing was funny,  
And our appetites were gone.

We read the American obituary, and saw  
the new stone that would mark its place  
With an Inaugural unveiling.

We cringed at the ugliness revealed  
The stifling of our spirits,  
The denial of our dreams.

We march, and our numbers rise.  
We watch, we phone,  
we fight for our rights.

We write for those wronged  
Being other should not mean lacking  
Different does not mean of less worth.

Still, we have not given up the fight.  
The list of their transgressions grows  
It will until they're stopped.

I am heartsick, but I have to believe  
We each have a voice we can use  
In aid of our conscience and convictions

When words and deeds and power combine  
Their leverage will bring strength to those confined  
To break through walls, manufactured or metaphorical.

The Kaddish seems apt, as we mourn our greatest loss  
What we can't help but fear will happen again.  
The truth of our people all but erased.

As if we were not “chosen” en masse  
its singular horror unacknowledged,  
though its evidence is indelible.  



End file.
